Hi everyone, and thank you Beryl for the invite.
So, who am I and what do I have to say? Well, here’s the official blurb:
In 1994 I co-founded of award-winning new-media studio antirom in
London and have worked with clients such as the BBC, the ABC, Levis
Strauss and Co. and The Science Museum. Antirom was born out of an
arts background (it was initially funded by The Arts Council of Great
Britain) and the self-titled CD-ROM will hopefully become one of the
classics in the short history of multimedia (at the very least give a
few people a nostalgia trip). Antirom closed its doors in 1999, but
the website lives on (though it's asleep) and we all keep in touch.
I also spent a spell as a senior producer/creative guy at Razorfish
in London. Tired of the London life, I visited Australia in 1999 to
travel, lecture and get a tan. Charmed by the lifestyle I stayed in
Sydney and started the interactive department of visual effects
company, Animal Logic.
I left Animal Logic in 2001 and am now a Senior Lecturer in
Interactive Media at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts and Head of the
School of Media Arts as well as working as a freelance designer and
writer (like I don’t have enough on). I write a column called Foreign
Policy for Desktop magazine and an occasional column on interaction
design for IdN. I have also written for other magazines and
newspapers as well as several academic papers. Through all of this I
have been lucky enough to have lectured, spoken and performed in
various countries around the world.
I recently won a Faculty Research Grant at UNSW to research the
language of interactivity and am belatedly working on my PhD at UTS
with the title “Developing a language of interactivity through the
theory of play”.
My research interests include: interactivity & interaction design;
creative processes & collaboration; online teaching & learning;
emerging technologies and their affect on culture and vice versa.
I am also writing my first novel, which I hope to complete before the
next millennium.
So, this sounds all a bit me, me, me, but that seemed to be the form
of things.
--- What's my issue with curating interactivity?
Well, here at Banff I'm about to present a paper called Lowbrow, High
Art: Why Big Fine Art doesn't understand interactivity. Among other
things it argues that interactivity (the physical kind) is one of the
defining features of new media (for me it is the new in new media,
but I recognise the bias there). I also argue that playfulness and
encouraging play is essential to compelling interaction. However,
playing in galleries or universities (particularly the bigger, more
conservative institutions) is not generally encouraged. Rather the
opposite in fact, you're more likely to be escorted out by security.
The second aspect of this paper is that interactivity often scales
badly - or rather interactive media art can scale badly. The bigger
projects become, the more they cost and the less playful they tend to
be. So we end up with some great white elephants that are
technologically rich, but experientially dull.
Finally, and this is something I'd like to address to Beryl, some of
the more interesting interactive work is happening outside the
gallery, in retail, public-space (non-art spaces, specifically),
videogames in lounge rooms, mobile phones on the bus, etc. When
they're taken out of context and put in the gallery they become more
like museum objects - the equivalent to anthropological trophies in
glass cabinets. The real experience of contemporary interactivity is
not in the gallery. So, should we still bother to put them in there?
I hope that raises a few questions and responses, obviously this has
been an incredibly brief outline of my argument, but I'm actually
trying to listen to Christiane Paul's lecture right now in the Banff
Centre!
Andy
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Andy Polaine
Head, School of Media Arts
Senior Lecturer, Interactive Media
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T +61 2 9385 0781
M +61 413 121 934
F +61 2 9385 0719
http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://blog.polaine.com
http://www.antirom.com
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School of Media Arts
College of Fine Arts (COFA)
The University of New South Wales
Cnr Oxford Street and Greens Road
Paddington
Sydney, NSW 2010
Australia
CRICOS Provider code: 00098G
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